


a flower that falls alone

by cassiem



Category: Block B
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki Disease, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 23:23:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7777690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassiem/pseuds/cassiem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jihoon starts to cough up pretty blue petals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a flower that falls alone

**Author's Note:**

> the hanahaki au: where someone starts throwing up/coughing up petals when suffering from unrequited love.

Jihoon’s drunk, because Jihoon’s always drunk these days, because it’s too hard not to be and he needs to _sleep_ and he can only sleep if he’s drunk. Minho and Hyuntae are rolling around on the floor laughing at something Jihoon’s said, but he can’t find it funny anymore because he’s nauseous as hell. That’s funny. He hasn’t been sick from drinking for ages, and wonders if it’s the hideous concoction of soju and vodka and wine that Minho had dreamed up and made them both drink, giggling deliriously the whole time.

“Be right back,” he tells them – or tries to, but it comes out slurred – before hauling himself off the sofa and staggering to the bathroom.

He has just enough time to make it to the bathroom sink before he retches, and leans heavily on the counter to try and steady himself. When he gags, his stomach violently rejecting the copious amounts of alcohol he’d shoved in it in a short period of time, nothing comes up and he frowns, before doubling over again. This time when he retches, tears forming in his eyes, he sees something fly out and land in the sink, a startling splash of blue in an isle of white. When he reaches out to touch it, he feels velvety softness under his fingers and frowns. A petal? He thinks he’d remember if he’d eaten any flowers tonight, but then with how his life is going who _knows_ what he’s ingested. Before he can even question it, though, his stomach rumbles again and he bends his head over the sink and vomits up handfuls of beautiful sky blue petals.

 _What the fuck?_ is all he has time to think before he blacks out, his legs giving way underneath him.

//

He comes to in his own bed, with Minho standing over him and Hyuntae wringing his hands nearby. When he stirs, groaning at the pain in his head, they both jump and stare down at him with wide eyes.

“Jihoon,” Minho says, and the relief is palpable in his voice as he grabs Jihoon’s hand. “You scared the shit out of us. What the hell happened?”

Blinking up at them blearily, he frowns. “I… I think I threw up, and then passed out? It’s all sort of… hazy…”

Minho and Hyuntae share a long look. “We heard a thump and ran in,” Hyuntae offers. “You were out cold on the floor. I can’t believe Minho’s shit cocktail made you pass out.”

“Yeah,” Jihoon says, weakly, struggling up into a sitting position and wincing. Carefully he feels the back of his head for any cuts, but there’s just a huge lump that’s tender to the touch. “Did you guys see the petals?”

There it is, that look again. It’s a look that Jihoon knows, because they all give it to each other whenever they’re trying to communicate without words. Sometimes it can mean _did Jiho really just do that?_ or _let’s get out of this club_ or _whose place are we crashing at tonight?_ – but Jihoon’s never been on the outside of that look and he doesn’t want to know what they’re thinking, not if their grim expressions are anything to go by. “Yeah, we saw. Whatever flowers you had in your bathroom must have dropped their petals pretty quick,” Minho says, but he can’t look Jihoon in the eyes when he says it.

When they leave – which takes a while, Jihoon having to usher them out with numerous assurances that he’s fine, having long-since sobered up – he makes his way to the bathroom and stares down at the petals, which are beginning to curl at the edges, fading to brown. When he buries his hands in them and picks them up, they feel soft and silky smooth to the touch, just as real petals would. They _are_ real petals – he can smell the faint scent of dirt when he smells them – and that just makes him more confused than ever. Vomiting up flowers…? How in the hell? _Why_ in the hell?

He flushes the petals down the toilet, hiding his shame, not knowing quite what’s wrong with him but unable to ignore the niggling voice at the back of his mind that says _you’re in trouble._

//

The weekend flies by with no more flower petals to be seen, and Jihoon manages to shove the event away into a corner of his mind, resolving not to go back there. So what if he vomited up flowers? Weirder things than that have happened before, and as long as it doesn’t happen again there’s nothing to be concerned about. That’s how he justifies it to himself in the beginning, and by the time he heads to the studio for dance practice on Monday he’s barely even thinking about it any more.

“I have arrived,” he intones dramatically, dumping his bag on top of Yukwon’s and throwing his arms in the air.

Jiho catches his eyes through the mirror and gives him an eye roll, and even though he’s wearing a mask Jihoon knows it’s not genuine exasperation. “Why are you always the last to arrive?”

“Because I hate being here?” he replies perfectly seriously, bounding over to Jiho and slinging an arm around his neck.

That gets him an elbow in the side, which he huffs melodramatically at, bending over double like he’s deliberately wounded. Playing with Jiho is easy, but turning around and greeting the others is hard, especially when Taeil’s standing there. Jihoon’s constantly aware of his presence, is always tracking him out of his peripheral vision without even meaning to, and it’s unnerving.

It’s not easy to pinpoint when Jihoon’s crush transitioned into full-on love. Perhaps it was after their last round of promotion cycles, when he deliberately put off moving out of the dorm for as long as humanly possible just so he would wake up to see Taeil’s smile. Or perhaps it was before that, when Jihoon spent hours with Taeil as he recorded and rerecorded lines for _Shaking_ , keeping him company because the others couldn’t be bothered. Or maybe even earlier, when Jiho holed himself up in the studio and left the others to run amok. Jihoon doesn’t really know, and he doesn’t really care – he only cares that it hurts whenever Taeil smiles happily at him, whenever he touches him, because he knows it’s not reciprocated. For a while he’d been able to live with that, but now it’s suddenly got to be too much, and he finds it hard to look at even Taeil anymore. Which is difficult, because they’re in the same damn _group_ , but whatever. Jihoon’s been making it work.

“Hey,” Taeil says, smiling at him as they move into position.

“Hey, you,” Jihoon murmurs back, sliding in next to him.

It’s both a blessing and a curse that they, as the worst dancers, are stuck at the back together – a blessing because Jihoon gets to keep sneaking peeks at Taeil while they dance, and a curse because whenever they fuck up (which is often) they end up _touching_ and that’s nearly too much for him to handle. The first run-through of the choreo goes disastrously, as per usual, and by the end of it Jaemin looks like he’s about to burst a blood vessel as he tells them to get back into position. Taeil’s hand brushes Jihoon as they cross each other, and Jihoon’s heart lurches in his chest.

By the third run-through, the coughing starts, and by the fifth he finds it hard to breathe. Jaemin stops them all and they all turn to him, confused, but it’s Taeil who reaches him first, and the moment he touches Jihoon the coughing turns into a sharp pain in his chest. Doubling over, he coughs hard once, twice, and feels a petal fly into his hands, soft and silky.

Something inside him is telling him not to let them _know_ , so he crushes the petal in his fist, standing up and shrugging off Taeil’s hand. “Are you all right?” he hears Minhyuk say, but he just turns away and speed-walks to the bathroom, locking the door and sagging against it heavily as another cough threatens to burst free.

 _No_ , he thinks helplessly as he opens his mouth to more beautiful blue petals, spilling into his hands and onto the floor, looking so out of place that he begins to cry. _No, no, no, no, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this isn’t happening this is just a bad dream and I’ll wake up any minute now –_

“Jihoon!” Jiho yells, banging on the door with his fist, making the whole thing shake. “What’s wrong?”

Jihoon can’t answer because he’s face down on the floor, sobbing quietly, lying amongst the petals. _His_ petals. They’re his petals because they’ve come from him, and when he’s stone cold sober that’s a horrifying prospect. Coughing up _petals_ – vomiting them up, and they’re _real_ , they’re not fake, this is real and it’s terrifying and he’s scared. He feels like he’s regressed backwards, to be like a child, but it’s so hard to try and be an adult when the cold weight of terror is surrounding him and his chest hurts like more petals are going to burst free.

“Jihoon, open this door right now or I’m going to break it down,” Jiho’s saying, and something again in Jihoon tells him they can’t know about this so he manages to push himself off the floor, grabbing handfuls of petals as he does.

“I’m fine,” he calls, wondering how his voice can sound so steady when he’s teetering on the precipice of a mental breakdown.

Jiho huffs and kicks the door impatiently, but Jihoon just ignores him as he dumps all the petals in the toilet, flushing them away. He then splashes cold water on his face and hopes that will disguise some of the redness. Thank God he’s brought his sunglasses today. When he opens the door and shoulders past Jiho, ignoring the way he grabs at him, he just ducks his head and makes his way back to the others. Taeil’s frowning at him, and Jihoon has to repress the urge to physically flinch away when he touches him on the arm.

“Are you okay?” he asks, his voice high and melodic.

Nodding, Jihoon slides his sunglasses out of his pocket and puts them on, fumbling for his mask and pulling that on, too. “Yeah, fine. Just got the flu or something.”

Taeil turns away, satisfied with that explanation, and Jihoon ducks his head to cough.

He spends the rest of dance practice trying to keep up with the moves, repressing the coughs that bloom in his chest. Most of the time he’s not successful, and he keeps having to catch the petals that erupt from him in a slow, steady stream and shove them in his pockets when no one’s looking. He thinks he gets away with it, but then he doesn’t know if Jiho’s suspicious looks at him through the mirror are because he _knows_ or because he’s worried about Jihoon.

//

When Jihoon gets home he rips off his mask – ignoring the two petals that flutter down to the floor when he does – and makes a beeline for his laptop, wrenching it open and navigating to Google. With shaking fingers, he begins to type, ever so slowly: _vomiting up flowers._

The moment he reads the name – _Hanahaki_ , a word that tastes so foreign and yet so familiar on his tongue – it sinks into him and he sags, a sob escaping him. He’s heard of this, they’ve all heard of this, but he had just buried it somewhere in his subconscious. The words he’s reading are all huge and scary, words like _extremely rare_ and _strangulation_ and _elective surgery_ and _eventually fatal_ , and when he scrolls down to read the cause _(a severe case of unrequited love brings on Hanahaki disease)_ he starts to cry properly, huge ugly sobs that tear through him and leave him empty. Through his tears he can see enough to read that the surgery _involves removal of the blooms that tighten around the heart_ and _surgery is extremely dangerous but is the only known cure, however the feelings of love are removed with the flowers. Some memory loss is to be expected._

He turns to stare at the petals on the floor. Everything is sort of blurry, but he can just make out the two spots of blue, startling against the cream of the tiles, and he glares at them through his sobs. If only he could tear out his heart instead of having it be strangled slowly; at least then he wouldn’t have to make a horrible choice. He’s had feelings for Taeil so long that it’s coloured their relationship from the beginning, and he doesn’t even know what it would be like to look at him without the rose-tinted glasses he’s been wearing for what seems like an eternity. God, he doesn’t even know if he _wants_ that, and it’s probably the pain clouding his thoughts – because he sure as shit doesn’t want to die, either, and that’s the alternative – but the idea of being devoid of feelings towards Taeil hurts. He doesn’t even know if his heart is hurting because of the flowers crushing it or because of the knowledge that he’s _dying_. Either way, it hurts like nothing he’s ever felt before, an awful crushing pain that’s everywhere, surrounding him.

This time, when he opens his mouth and vomits up handfuls of pretty blue petals, he’s not surprised.

//

It’s all too easy to throw himself into practice with renewed vigour as a desperate form of distraction, which only half works. No matter how far away he stands from Taeil the coughs are nearly constant as long as they’re in the same room. The others get used to it pretty quickly and accept his blatant lie about the flu, but that doesn’t stop him panicking whenever he feels another flower petal land in his mouth. By the end of each day, when he gets home and empties his pockets, he has handful upon handful of sweet-smelling soft petals stashed in there. He’s sure that the only thing stopping the ever-perceptive Jiho from picking up on the fact that something’s wrong is that he’s completely wrapped up in preparing for their comeback, the days ticking down as the date looms closer and closer.

“Are you coming round to the dorm, later?” Kyung asks him when they finish practice, sweaty and heaving and, in Jihoon’s case, with horrible chest pains that are slowly becoming a constant reality. “We’re all gonna get wasted and dig out the karaoke machine. Even Jiho’s coming.”

Jihoon opens his mouth to refuse – all he wants to do right now is go home and lie in bed and cough up petals in peace – when Taeil sidles up to him and links his arm through Jihoon’s, smiling up at him happily. “You have to come! You’ve been so distant from us, lately,” he says, pouting a bit.

Jihoon’s heart soars, because Taeil’s touching him and Taeil’s asking after him and Taeil is _pouting_ – but then he coughs, and tastes a petal on his tongue, and grimaces. If Taeil wasn’t just being friendly the stupid fucking flowers would go away, but they’re still here so he knows this is just a lie. “All right,” he replies, weakly.

He only just makes it into the bathroom in time for his stomach to heave and for him to vomit up a huge amount of petals, more than he’s ever seen before.

//

It all falls apart not long after that.

Jihoon’s just finishing up a DJ Doc song, helpfully spurred on by the copious amounts of alcohol the others (mainly Kyung) kept offering him. He’d kept his mask on most of the night, but had taken it off to sing, hoping that the petals would stay away long enough so he could finish one goddamn song – and so far, they have. He belts out the last note loud enough to have Jaehyo rolling back on the floor with his hands over his ears and the rest of them practically falling over at his awful singing, and then bows theatrically.

He’s so drunk that he barely notices Taeil’s phone ringing and him slipping outside to answer it – it registers on his consciousness, but he doesn’t do anything about it, instead flops down on the floor next to Jaehyo and drapes an arm around his shoulder. “Are you next, hyung? Just don’t sing a boring ballad,” he slurs.

Jiho and Kyung are whispering something from where they’re sitting on the lounge, their limbs entangled because that’s how they always sit when they’re drunk and sometimes when they’re sober, too. Jihoon isn’t really paying attention until one of them says Taeil’s name, and the next word is _girlfriend_ and suddenly Jihoon’s all ears.

“What?” he mutters, turning around.

They both turn to look at him in unison, and they’re wearing matching deer-in-the-headlights expressions that would be hilarious any other time except now. It hits Jihoon, then, that they _know_ – and if those two know about his crush on Taeil then he’s sure the others do, too. That in itself has his chest tightening, a cough threatening, but he tamps it down by swallowing desperately and looks between them, waiting for the surely logical, reasonable explanation that’s to come. Instead Jiho looks at Kyung and then back at him, and he looks so pained that Jihoon coughs, catching the petal deftly.

“He wanted to tell you…” Jiho says, quietly, and Minhyuk looks up from where he is clicking through for the next song. “He just didn’t know when the right time was.”

Jihoon’s stomach sinks, but he plays up his confusion and tilts his head to the side. “Tell me what?”

There’s a moment of silence where they all stare at him – Minhyuk and Jaehyo and Jiho and Kyung and Yukwon – and in that silence grows a horrible, horrible understanding. He almost wants the silence to stretch on forever, because then at least his fears can be unconfirmed forever. But right as Taeil walks back in the room, slipping his phone back in his pocket with a smile stretched across his face, Minhyuk opens his mouth and says, “Taeil has a girlfriend.”

A pause. Jihoon opens his mouth to say something, although he’s not sure what, but he catches Taeil’s eyes and sees how _guilty_ he looks, how _sheepish_ , and realises he knows. They all know, and they’ve presumably known for months, years, even. No one had said a damn word.

He doesn’t have time to make it to the bathroom, this time. Doesn’t even have time to _move_ before his stomach heaves and he leans over and vomits petals onto the dorm floor, his throat raw and hurting and his eyes watering. The atmosphere suddenly changes from charged to icy, but Jihoon’s too busy gritting his teeth and swallowing, trying to hold himself back from vomiting again, knowing that it’s all over, now.

“Jihoon –” Jiho whispers, and his voice is so full of anguish it actually hurts to hear.

Jihoon shakes his head, clambering to his feet unsteadily. “Don’t.”

They’re all still stunned into silence. Minhyuk and Yukwon look horribly grim, Jaehyo looks horrified, Kyung looks like he’s going to be sick himself, Jiho’s face is etched with concern and Taeil – Taeil is wearing such a look of guilt that Jihoon turns away and is sick again, the blue petals scattering all over the floor, over everything. This time, though, the last few petals that come out are tinged with red and when he licks his lips he can taste the metallic taste of his own blood, salty and horribly familiar. The taste sobers him, a bit, but he’s so giddy and the pain in his chest is so sharp that he doesn’t care, anymore, that he’s most certainly dying.

“Call an ambulance,” Kyung snaps, standing up and taking a hesitant step towards Jihoon. “Call an ambulance right now, Jiho, he’s _bleeding –”_

Jihoon glares at him and wraps his arms around himself, suppressing a cough. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

That stops Kyung in his tracks, his eyes wide. “Jihoon, stop it,” he whispers faintly, like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing – and for Kyung to sound like that it’s serious. “You have to go to hospital. You have to have the surgery.”

“No,” he says, and coughs up a bloody petal into his hand. “If you tell anyone about this I’ll walk out that fucking door and I won’t come back, not ever.”

Kyung recoils from him physically like Jihoon has hit him, but when he looks up it’s a boiling anger that he sees in his gaze. “You’re dying,” he spits, and he points at the petal that’s staining Jihoon’s fingers red.

“I don’t care. This stays between us,” Jihoon snarls back, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth before picking his way over the crap on the floor to the dorm door, completely unable to meet Taeil’s gaze.

He picks up his shoes, lets himself out and shuts the door quietly behind him, staggering down the hall to the lift. When he gets inside he doubles over and lets the coughs burst free, splattering the floor with blood and petals, tracking a trail of it through the carpark and staining his floor mats in his car. He’s entirely too drunk to drive, he knows – not to mention his vision is kind of blurry, and it’s hard to breathe because there’s a weird gurgling in his chest – but he figures he’s dying anyway, so what does it matter if he goes out a few weeks early? Does he even _have_ weeks left, or is it days? Hours? Does it matter?

It’s only when he pulls up to a set of lights that it sinks in, what Minhyuk had said, what the others had all known for God knows how long. Taeil has a girlfriend. All the times he’d smiled at his phone it wasn’t over a picture of his dog or a particularly funny article he was reading, it was because of _her_ , this nameless woman that Jihoon finds himself hating irrationally. Is she a celebrity like them, or someone unknown? What does she look like? Is she tall or short? He doesn’t even realise he’s crying until the light turns green and it’s refracted into a million different fractals like he’s looking through a kaleidoscope. He knew, of course, that Taeil didn’t feel the same way, or else he wouldn’t be cursed with these damn petals – however it was easy to have hope when there was an open-ended possibility. Now Taeil has someone, though? Someone that’s not him? The reality is so painful, and he isn’t sure whether it’s the flowers or the heartbreak that’s making him ache so.

He makes it to his apartment safely, by some ridiculous miracle, and manages to stagger to his bed and collapse into it without further injury, or, worse, further bloody petals. All he does is lay there and cry softly until sleep, mercifully, takes him.

//

“Stop staring at me,” Jihoon mutters.

It’s D-Day, as he’s titled it in his mind: their music video is released tonight, which means yet more hours of dance practice. They’ve all got it down pat, now it’s just about pounding it into their heads until they could do it in their sleep. Even with their crazy routines things are still better than the old days where they’d be stuck in the studio until three or four am, perhaps even later – the coughs would have been nearly impossible to hide, then. They’ve only been dancing for an hour, but no one has said anything and the atmosphere is so tense it’s hard to breathe.

The blood had gone away by the time he’d woken up, and his coughs are back to the relative normalcy of every few minutes. He’s not even bothering to hide the petals, now, hasn’t brought his mask and is just catching them as they come. He’s gotten so used to them that he barely notices them anymore, but every time he coughs the others all flinch.

Kyung catches his eyes through the mirror, and he looks fucking _livid_. “Oh, I’m sorry that our reactions to the sounds of your heart being crushed are bothering you. We’ll make sure to stop making you uncomfortable from now on.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jihoon replies, curling his lip. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. How are you going to go on stage like this? How are you going to perform at the concert like this? Don’t you see that you have to get the surgery?” Jiho murmurs, and he sounds so weary that it makes Jihoon pause.

Jihoon looks around for support, but finds none – the others are all looking at the floor or the walls, visibly uncomfortable with the situation. Only Taeil is staring at him evenly, but he looks so miserable and small that a wave of nausea washes over Jihoon at the sight of it. He _knows_ , he knows, and all of a sudden the weight of his shame is too much, he can’t stand it. He hates this.

“I had the fucking surgery,” Kyung blurts suddenly, whirling around and stalking over to Jihoon, pushing him in the chest. “Years ago. Started coughing up petals when we were still with Stardom. Joonghoon saw and told my parents. I don’t regret getting those stupid fucking things cut out because if I’d kept them I’d have just been _selfish_ , which is what you’re doing.” He pushes Jihoon on the chest again, forcing him back a few steps. “This is bigger than you. Grow up.”

It’s pretty obvious that no one except Jiho had known that, because they all stare at Kyung like he’s got a second head, except Jiho who stares at the floor resolutely. Jihoon’s too angry to be shocked, though, and pushes Kyung back, swallowing a cough. “Didn’t it hurt? To forget?” he growls, and he wonders who on earth Kyung had been in love with.

“That’s the _point_. It doesn’t hurt. You don’t remember,” Kyung spits, turning his back on Jihoon and walking out of the room without another word.

The silence is so heavy that all Jihoon can hear is the sound of his own rattling breaths – when did they sound so _wet?_ He catches Taeil’s eyes in the mirror again and coughs, spitting up two petals helplessly.

Taeil takes a step closer to Jihoon, hesitantly. “Please get the surgery,” he starts, but Jihoon backs away and shakes his head. “Please get rid of them. I couldn’t forgive myself if –”

“No, no, no,” Jihoon says, wrapping his arms around himself and shaking his head, but Taeil just keeps going.

“– If something happened to you because of _me_ , because this is about me, isn’t it, Jihoonie?”

Jihoon closes his eyes, helpless and adrift as the nausea washes over him. “No,” he moans, and when the petals come they’re dripping in blood and there’s crimson splashed all over the floor, all over him, and it’s filling his nose, his mouth, salty and thick and impossible to ignore. “No,” he says again, before he faints dead away, the last thing he sees being Taeil reaching out towards him.

//

Faded, blurry, hazy. That’s all he knows. The smell of hospital, he remembers, he’ll always remember that. Sheets scratchy against his skin, blood in his mouth, petals in his throat. He’s dying, he’s dying, he’s dying but he doesn’t want to forget, can’t forget Taeil. Taeil’s all he’s known, all he’s ever known, all these five years, it’s all he _is_.

Pathetic, to define yourself by the unrequited love of someone else. Perhaps. But Jihoon’s head is hurting and when he opens he can’t see, feels wetness, he’s crying. Oh. Tears. Crying. Funny.

“Jihoon,” Jiho whispers, and he feels someone take his hand. “I’m here for you. Your parents are here.”

A choked sound as someone touches him on the forehead. His mother’s touch, and he moves towards it instinctually. He’s barely aware of what’s going on, but the touch anchors him, and he licks his lips, tastes blood.

Dying, dying, the stench of death is everywhere, and it smells like flowers in spring.

//

The first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is the bright LED light burning into his eyes, and he recoils physically into the thin pillows, scratchy sheets. Jesus. It’s like someone’s rewound the time back to 2012 and Jihoon’s nineteen again, hospitalised because he’d wanted to die and had stupidly told the others about it. The only reason he knows it’s not 2012 is because his mother has her hair cut short and his father’s going grey.

“What happened?” he asks, and his voice is so hoarse it sounds like nails down a chalkboard.

His mother startles and gasps, reaching out for his hand and taking it. His father looks up, and the relief etched on his face is so clear that Jihoon wonders what on earth he’s done. Did he get into a car accident? Step in front of a truck accidentally? God only knows.

“Don’t you remember?” she whispers, and tightens her grip on his hand.

Jihoon shakes his head. “I remember… going to practice. Did I faint? Shit, was it the dieting?”

His mother and father exchange a look of faint horror before they both turn to look at him again. “You’ve been out for a couple of days. Do you not remember what made you faint?” his father questions, tilting his head to the side, and he looks so genuinely puzzled that it’s actually starting to worry Jihoon, and he shakes his head.

“You…” his mother begins, before looking down at the floor. “You had Hanahaki disease, Jihoonie. Jiho rang us from the ambulance, said that you’d fainted during practice and you were bleeding out. You had to have emergency surgery.”

Oh.

_Oh._

He remembers, now. It all comes back to him in a rush and he gasps, expecting a cough – but nothing happens, and he breathes out slowly. There’s no pain, no sense of loss, _nothing_. It’s like they’re his memories lived by someone else, because he feels so detached from it he could be remembering something as uneventful as having breakfast last Tuesday. There’s the way Kyung had pushed him, his face screwed up in anger, and there’s the way Taeil had reached for him, his eyes filling with tears, and there’s the way he’d tasted his own damn blood and knew he was dying.

He waits for the pain to come, but there’s nothing. No heartache at having to look at Taeil and knowing that he was never going to be Jihoon’s, no mourning over the feeling of what once was, what could never be. There’s _nothing_ , just an empty void in his chest, and Jihoon wonders if, when they took his flowers, they took his heart, too.

//

Normalcy resumes.

When he gets out of hospital, Jiho tells him they’d pushed back promotions for him to be able to heal – Seven Seasons had released a statement saying he was hospitalised with respiratory issues, which wasn’t _technically_ a lie, and the well-wishes had been rolling in ever since. The others had all wanted to visit desperately but Jiho had kept them away, thought that was for the best, and Jihoon has to agree. He doesn’t want to deal with the anger, the uncomfort, the – well, whatever Taeil’s feeling. It’s a sign of how different things are that all he feels is a mild curiosity to how Taeil’s doing than a huge rush of angst, and while ordinarily he’d be terrified at that he just doesn’t care anymore.

The first time Jihoon lays his eyes on Taeil after the operation is entirely anticlimactic – Jihoon’s staying in the dorm, because Jiho insists, and he runs into Taeil in the hallway. Taeil stops and stares, his mouth dropping open, but Jihoon just smiles wanly at him and keeps walking. There’s no desire to touch him, to grab him and whirl him around and make him giggle. There’s nothing, and perhaps the absence of that should be ringing alarm bells in Jihoon’s head but it feels so normal, now that he can’t bring himself to care.

“Take a picture, hyung, it will last longer,” he singsongs as he continues to the kitchen, humming happily to himself under his breath. When he looks back over his shoulder, Taeil is still gaping at him, and all he can do is laugh.

//

This is how easy it is to forget.

Whereas before Taeil’s laughing made Jihoon warm from the inside out, especially if he was the one making him laugh, now the hooting makes him vaguely irritated. Whereas before he’d enjoy making Taeil squirm in front of the cameras, going for his nipples or his ass just to get a reaction, he can’t be bothered to anymore. Standing next to Taeil for dance practice – once he gets the all clear from his doctors, of course – is no longer torturous but just part of his day. He has no qualms about hearing about Taeil’s girlfriend, now, and even meets her happily. She’s sweet and nice and everything Taeil deserves, and Jihoon just grins widely at them both.

It’s not so much that he forgets, because that would imply that he can’t remember if he chooses. And he _can_. But it happened to a different Jihoon, a Jihoon that he looks back on with amusement tinged with disgust. That Jihoon was so desperate, always clamouring for Taeil’s affection and humiliating himself so easily to get it. He’s above that, now – what’s the point? Taeil will never feel the same, that’s simply a fact. He shouldn’t waste his life waiting for something that’s never going to happen, and he’s already wasted five years. That’s long enough.

The date of the concert arrives. Jihoon spends most of it sitting down in a chair, as per his doctor’s orders, which is perfectly fine by him – he manages to poke fun at the others, stuck doing the choreography while he gets to relax and lounge around. The whole thing goes off without a hitch, and it’s like his days in hospital are a distant memory, faded and far away. Even afterwards when they start promotions – albeit a few weeks late, robbing them of any music show wins – it just feels like normal again. Nothing is missing, Jihoon’s not incomplete. They’re all on top of the world.

“What colour were yours?” he giggles, grabbing Kyung’s glass and taking a swig, ducking as Kyung swats at him.

“Fucking pink. Can you believe it?” Kyung replies, rolling his eyes.

They’re all getting drunk in the dorm again, only this time no one is coughing up petals and there’s no tense atmosphere, just nothing but happy warmth between the seven of them. Jihoon has to raise his voice over the sounds of Yukwon butchering a K.Will song, but that’s alright, it’s homely and it’s normal and it’s all he wanted without ever really knowing.

“Pink petals!” Jihoon snorts. The image of Kyung vomiting up beautiful pink petals is funny to him, for some reason, even though he knows he was doing the same just a few weeks ago and it wasn’t funny at all. “That kinda suits you, actually.”

Kyung growls, but it’s playful. “Fuck off. Whose turn is it next?”

Standing up and snatching the mic out of Yukwon’s hands, Jihoon grins evilly down at the rest of them. “Prepare to bask in my glory. You’ll have to kick Taeil out of the lead vocal spot after this.”

By the end of the night they’re all so drunk they can’t stand up and everyone ends up heaped on the floor or on the lounge. Jiho and Kyung are weirdly close again, Yukwon is slumped in the corner on his phone – no doubt texting Sunhye stuff like _god they wouldn’t shut up I’m deaf_ , Minhyuk is doing some weird stretch, Jaehyo has fallen asleep and Taeil is leaning against the sofa watching Jihoon evenly.

“We should do this more often,” Jihoon mutters, managing to haul himself to his feet with the aid of the wall. “It’s really fun. I missed it.”

Jiho rolls his eyes. “If you drink any more than you do you’ll end up with liver failure. In fact, I’m pretty sure your doctors told you not to get drunk for, like, months.”

Jihoon dismisses him with a hand wave as he pads down the hall to his bedroom. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

The moment he gets into the relative privacy of his room he pulls his shirt over his head, clumsily, and yanks open his drawers. Tonight seems like a night for his favourite pyjama shirt (soft with age and with a monkey design on the front) that he only digs out when he’s feeling sappy, because it reminds him of old times when he was a lot more innocent and naive. He’s pawing through the drawer, tossing clothes out haphazardly, when he hears someone walk in the room. He just has enough time to look up before Taeil’s pushing him back against the wall, crowding into his personal space, Jihoon’s hand settling on his hip.

Oh.

“What are you doing, hyung?” he murmurs, his voice steady even as his eyes are flicking between Taeil’s eyes and his lips, so very close to his face.

Taeil shakes his head, his lips pressed into a line. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“You _know_ what,” retorts Taeil, leaning in closer so their foreheads are brushing. Jihoon’s heart rate quickens despite himself. “Stop being so fucking cold.”

“You never cared before. Bit fucking late to start now,” he replies evenly, raising an eyebrow and marvelling that he can sound so smooth even when he’s this drunk.

Taeil bites his lip. Nice. He can’t even say that he does care, can’t even admit to – to whatever the hell it is that’s going on in his head. Jihoon’s sick of it suddenly, doesn’t want this, even though he’d have _died_ for this a month ago, and goes to nudge Taeil away – but Taeil pushes up on his toes and kisses him firmly on the mouth.

Oh.

Taeil is a damn good kisser, and he feels his body responding instinctually without him really realising; one hand slides around Taeil’s waist to pull him closer, the other curling in his hair, pulling on it gently in the way that he somehow knows Taeil will like. _Bad idea_ , a voice tells him, but it’s easy to ignore when Taeil bites his bottom lip, his hands sweeping over Jihoon’s body like he’s wanted to do this for a long time. It’s somewhat odd to be going through the motions like this completely devoid of the feelings, but it’s pleasant enough, so Jihoon doesn’t pull away until Taeil does.

“No. Stop it. Touch me _properly_ ,” he growls, and barrels back into Jihoon.

This is different. This is more intense. This is Taeil biting at his neck, wedging a thigh between Jihoon’s legs, grinding against his hip. This is want and need written in the way he presses his hands on Jihoon’s back, in the way he moans when Jihoon drags his nails down his back, sounding needy, sounding _wrecked_. It starts to sink in, through the alcohol, what exactly is happening, and the prospect is intoxicating. Without even thinking about it he whirls Taeil around so Taeil’s pressed up against the wall, making him gasp, and kisses him again, losing himself.

“Come back to me,” Taeil murmurs as Jihoon tugs up his shirt to press his hands on the skin of his belly, edging up towards his ribs.

Yes, yes, _yes_. This is easy, this is right, this is everything he never knew he was missing. This is the redux of the last five years, but this time Taeil’s here, Taeil’s touching him, and it feels like the start of a new beginning. All the feelings that had disappeared in the wake of the surgery bloom again, warming him from the inside out. He hadn’t known he was so cold without Taeil, but now it’s like he’s swallowed the sun and it’s shining through every pore – he’s on top of the world, and he’s smiling against Taeil’s lips as Taeil whines and shifts closer.

And then Jihoon pulls back and vomits beautiful blue petals all over the floor, all over himself, and Taeil freezes, a statue, the truth revealed.

_Oh._

**Author's Note:**

> I used a lot of names in this fic that the casual fan might not be familiar with so:  
> Minho = Song Mino  
> Hyuntae = Incredivle  
> Jaemin = Hong Jaemin, Block B's choreographer  
> Joonghoon = Cho PD (founded Block B)
> 
> hope this helped!
> 
>  Oh, I got a few comments about the ending being confusing: Taeil isn't in love with Jihoon (hence why Jihoon vomited flowers again). He just missed the attention from Jihoon. Sorry for making u the villain Taeillie :(
> 
> i'm sorry for not posting in a while... all my travelling wore me out and uni started so my life has just been a mess lately. I am working on things, though, I haven't vanished! :)


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